Final Thoughts, Rankings, Pricing, and Conclusion
Final thoughts
When writing an article that evaluates multiple applications, it’s challenging to resist the temptation to compare each program to one another. The focus of this article was to evaluate how each application utilized CUDA to accelerate transcoding times and decrease or match CPU usage, so that is what I’ll attempt to focus my comments on.
Each application we reviewed today had their own separate pros and cons, but most of them utilized CUDA quite efficiently and we noticed considerable drops in CPU usage during most of our benchmarks. The only program we didn’t receive large decreases in CPU usage was CyberLink PowerDirector 7. The CPU was pegged at 100 percent during every benchmark we threw at PowerDirector 7. It’s not a bad thing for the CPU to be utilized at 100 percent with the GPU still engaged, but it would have been nice to see some more CPU efficiency so we could do more multi-tasking during transcoding.
All our benchmarks showed that enabling and disabling CUDA had a huge impact on video transcoding times. Some applications mainly focused on better transcoding times and not on offloading work from the CPU to the GPU, which is just fine if users need an application that takes advantage of every processing option available. Overall, all of these applications had something unique for consumers to enjoy.
Application rankings
Going back to our goals for this review, we ranked each transcoder in four key areas – ease of use, CPU utilization, image quality, and transcoding speed. These rankings are based off what we think the consumer experience would be from using these applications. Our ranking system range from Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor. Here’s our breakdown of where each transcoder ranked during our testing.
Ease of Use
Cyberlink PowerDirector7 – Good
Elemental Badaboom – Excellent
MotionDSP vReveal – Good
Super Loiloscope – Good
TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum – Fair
CPU Utilization
Cyberlink PowerDirector7 – Poor
Elemental Badaboom – Excellent
MotionDSP vReveal – Fair
Super Loiloscope – Good
TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum – Excellent
Image Quality
Cyberlink PowerDirector7 – Good
Elemental Badaboom – Good
MotionDSP vReveal – Good
Super Loiloscope – Excellent
TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum – Excellent
Transcoding Speeds
Cyberlink PowerDirector7 – Excellent
Elemental Badaboom – Excellent
MotionDSP vReveal – Excellent
Super Loiloscope – Excellent
TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum – N/A (No transcoding benchmarks completed)
As you can see from our rankings, some applications were a little better in certain areas than others. Most of the differences between these rankings were very minimal, but there were a couple things we couldn’t overlook that changed a couple of the rankings from an excellent to good, good to fair, and fair to poor.
One area every application excelled in was transcoding speeds. All four true transcoders (excluding TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum) knocked out some super fast transcoding times in everything from 640×480 to 1920×1080 resolution videos. Frankly, this is the main benchmark that means the most to a majority of consumers so we were pleased when each app performed well in this area.
The next category that consumers care about after transcoding speeds is ease of use. Badaboom had an extremely clean and simple interface that was easy to use from the moment we opened the program. The user interface made it easy to figure out which type of format we needed because our choices were based off the device we wanted to play our video on and not by the specific video format or what quality of sound we wanted to use. Elemental really simplified the process of choosing the proper video format as well as giving people with a little more experience some moderately-advanced options to modify. We also want to give honorable mentions to vReveal and PowerDirector7 for their UIs, but the most consumer-friendly app right out of the box was Badaboom.
Image quality is another important area for consumers when they are choosing a video editing and transcoding program. Although this area is very subjective because we didn’t use any synthetic or real-world benchmarks to analyze each app’s performance in this area, I felt through my two weeks with these applications that each outputted very consistent and clear video that should impress those watching it on their iPods and those viewing from their 22″ to 24” LCDs.
Lastly, testing CPU utilization is more of a benchmark for PC enthusiasts and not basic consumers, but it still plays a critical role in overall transcoding times. The winners in this area were Badaboom and TotalMedia Theatre 3. TotalMedia Theatre 3 only used 6 to 11 percent of the CPU’s resources during DVD playback. When we turned CUDA off, CPU usage rocketed up to 94 percent. These performance swings are the difference between users being able to multi-task and those who will see considerable lag while watching an HD movie and performing other functions on their PCs at the same time. The definitive loser during our CPU utilization benchmarks was PowerDirector7. While the overall transcoding times stayed pretty low, CPU utilization was pegged out at 100 percent for each benchmark.
Pricing
These transcoding applications are priced between $30 and $100 depending on which version users choose to purchase. PowerDirector7 has deluxe and ultra versions and TotalMedia Theatre3 can be purchased with or without the SimHD plug-in. The best “bang for the buck” seems to be Badaboom at $29.99.
Cyberlink PowerDirector7 – Deluxe: $54.92; Ultra: $79.92
Elemental Badaboom – $29.99
MotionDSP vReveal – $49.99
Super Loiloscope – $69
TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum – Without SimHD plug-in: $89.99; with SimHD plug-in: $99.99
CUDA vs. ATI Stream coming soon
Our GPU parallel computing architecture battle would not be complete if we didn’t mention ATI and their Stream technology, which was unveiled officially May 28. ATI Stream is a set of advanced hardware and software technologies that enable AMD GPUs to work in concert with its CPUs to accelerate applications beyond just graphics. We posted the initial press release on our website that discusses ATI Stream in more detail. In the near future, we will compare these two technologies to see which one truly provides the most performance gains as well as which takes home the GPU parallel computing crown.
Conclusion
We’d like to thank NVIDIA, Cyberlink, Elemental, MotionDSP, Arcsoft, and Loilo for providing their respective software for our evaluation today. CUDA technology has proven to be a huge transcoding time-saver and will definitely give video production companies something to smile about when they enable this technology in their professional workstations. Consumers at home will also enjoy being able to create home movies that they can use on the on their favorite social networking websites and in their DVD and Blu Ray players at home.
Each application used CUDA in various ways, but all of them took advantage of the GPU acceleration properties that CUDA has to offer. We also liked how some of the apps we reviewed used CUDA for rendering video effects, which also helps reduce transcoding times. All in all, each of these applications has something for every type of consumer and the price is pretty close to what buyers are looking for in simple video editing and transcoding software.
